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While dental implants have become the most popular restoration among both dentists and patients, it’s primarily a tooth replacement — either for a missing tooth or a tooth beyond repair that must be extracted. But what if your tooth is still viable beneath its unattractive exterior? From an oral health standpoint, it’s usually wise to preserve it.

Even so, you still have options for making a tooth that’s spoiling your smile more attractive. One of the most effective solutions happens to be one of the oldest in dentistry: a crown. In effect, a crown is a life-like replica made of metal or dental porcelain that’s bonded over a tooth. And with today’s advanced materials and methods a crown can not only enhance the appearance of the tooth it covers, it can also be made to blend with the color and symmetry of adjacent teeth.

Here are a few dental situations where a crown could provide both protection for a tooth and a more attractive appearance.

Chipped, Damaged or Abnormally Developed Teeth. Teeth often take the brunt of mouth injuries, resulting in chips or even fractures. Also, teeth sometimes don’t erupt fully or develop a normal shape. A crown can effectively cover these missing or abnormal parts of a tooth and restore a more natural appearance.

Following Root Canal Treatment. Trauma or deep decay can damage the interior of a tooth - the pulp and root canals - and endanger its survival. A root canal treatment cleans out and repairs these areas, filling them with a special filling to prevent further infection. A crown is usually necessary to both protect the tooth and restore its appearance.

Discoloration. There’s a difference between outward staining of the enamel, which can usually be brightened with whitening solutions, and staining deep within the tooth from various causes. While there are techniques to bleach “intrinsic” staining, a crown provides another option for covering a heavily discolored tooth for a more attractive appearance.

Excessive Wear. We all experience some teeth wearing as we age; but grinding or clenching habits can accelerate that wear and shorten teeth, resulting in a prematurely aged look. Crowns restore worn teeth to a more normal length that can take “years” off your smile.

Are you embarrassed by your front teeth? Maybe it’s just moderate defects—a chipped tooth here, an irregularly shaped tooth there—but it’s enough to make you less confident to smile.

There are a number of ways to transform your teeth’s appearance like porcelain veneers or crowns. But a relatively inexpensive method that’s less involved is to bond dental material called composite resin to your teeth to correct defects. Made of synthetic resins, these restorative materials can mimic your own natural tooth color. We can also artistically shape them to create a more natural look for an irregular tooth.

If you’re looking to change the way your front teeth look, here are 3 reasons to consider composite resins to restore them.

They can be applied in one office visit. Although effective, veneers, crowns and similar restorations are typically outsourced to dental labs for custom fabrication. While the results can be stunning, the process itself can take weeks. By contrast, we can colorize, bond and shape composite resins to your teeth in just one visit: you could gain your “new smile” in just one day.

They don’t require extensive tooth alteration. Many restorations often require tooth structure removal to adequately accommodate them, which can permanently alter the tooth. Thanks to the bonding techniques used with composite resins, we can preserve much more of the existing tooth while still achieving a high degree of artistry and lifelikeness.

Composite resins are stronger than ever. Over the years we’ve learned a lot about how teeth interact with each other to produce the forces occurring during chewing and biting. This knowledge has contributed greatly to the ongoing development of dental materials. As a result, today’s composite resins are better able to handle normal biting forces and last longer than those first developed a few decades ago.

Composite resins may not be suitable for major cosmetic dental problems, but you might still be surprised by their range. To learn if composite resins could benefit your situation—even a large defect—see us for a complete examination.

The March 27th game started off pretty well for NBA star Kevin Love. His team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, were coming off a 5-game winning streak as they faced the Miami Heat that night. Less than two minutes into the contest, Love charged in for a shot on Heat center Jordan Mickey—but instead of a basket, he got an elbow in the face that sent him to the floor (and out of the game) with an injury to his mouth.

In pictures from the aftermath, Love’s front tooth seemed clearly out of position. According to the Cavs’ official statement, “Love suffered a front tooth subluxation.” But what exactly does that mean, and how serious is his injury?

The dental term “subluxation” refers to one specific type of luxation injury—a situation where a tooth has become loosened or displaced from its proper location. A subluxation is an injury to tooth-supporting structures such as the periodontal ligament: a stretchy network of fibrous tissue that keeps the tooth in its socket. The affected tooth becomes abnormally loose, but as long as the nerves inside the tooth and the underlying bone have not been damaged, it generally has a favorable prognosis.

Treatment of a subluxation injury may involve correcting the tooth’s position immediately and/or stabilizing the tooth—often by temporarily splinting (joining) it to adjacent teeth—and maintaining a soft diet for a few weeks. This gives the injured tissues a chance to heal and helps the ligament regain proper attachment to the tooth. The condition of tooth’s pulp (soft inner tissue) must also be closely monitored; if it becomes infected, root canal treatment may be needed to preserve the tooth.

So while Kevin Love’s dental dilemma might have looked scary in the pictures, with proper care he has a good chance of keeping the tooth. Significantly, Love acknowledged on Twitter that the damage “…could have been so much worse if I wasn’t protected with [a] mouthguard.”

Love’s injury reminds us that whether they’re played at a big arena, a high school gym or an outdoor court, sports like basketball (as well as baseball, football and many others) have a high potential for facial injuries. That’s why all players should wear a mouthguard whenever they’re in the game. Custom-made mouthguards, available for a reasonable cost at the dental office, are the most comfortable to wear, and offer protection that’s superior to the kind available at big-box retailers.

Nearly half of all Americans have some form of periodontal (gum) disease. Without proper daily hygiene and treatment, this aggressive disease can ultimately cause tooth loss. It also appears the effects of gum disease reach beyond the mouth, as researchers have found relationships between it and other systemic diseases.

Inflammation, the body’s response to infection, is at the center of these relationships. In the case of gum disease, periodontal tissues become inflamed as the body attempts to isolate and fight the infection. If the inflammation becomes chronic, however, it will begin to damage gum tissues.

Inflammation is also a major feature of diabetes, a condition in which the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin. Without enough of this hormone that transforms sugar into usable energy for the body, the sugar accumulates in the blood stream; as a result, the patient becomes more susceptible to an exaggerated inflammatory response when the body encounters an infection. This is especially true for periodontal infections: the resulting inflammation can be greater and harder to control in diabetic patients. What’s more, uncontrolled gum disease may worsen their blood sugar levels.

Although not as prominent as with diabetes, cardiovascular disease also seems to share a connection with gum disease. This collection of chronic conditions like high blood pressure or restricted blood vessel flow raises the risk of heart attack or stroke. Like gum disease, inflammation is a major component in the progression of cardiovascular disease — in fact, both diseases leave similar chemical “markers” in the blood that indicate their early development.

Ongoing research has also produced some promising treatment findings for both gum disease and inflammatory diseases, which also include osteoporosis, respiratory disease and rheumatoid arthritis. We’re now finding in many cases that treating one side of the disease connection can have positive effects on the other side. For example, diabetics who receive professional treatment for gum disease may see better blood sugar control.

With this in mind, the best approach is to practice effective, daily oral hygiene to reduce the risk of gum disease, coupled with regular office cleanings and checkups. Not only will this help you maintain optimum oral health, it may also contribute to better management of other conditions you may have.

We’re all familiar with “naughty” and “nice” lists for food: “nice” items are beneficial or at least harmless; on the other hand, those on the “naughty” list are not and should be avoided. And processed sugar has had top billing on many people’s “naughty” list for some time now.

And for good reason: it’s linked to many physical ills including obesity, diabetes and heart disease. As a favorite food for oral bacteria that cause dental disease, sugar can also increase your risk for tooth decay or periodontal (gum) disease.

Most people agree that reducing sugar in their diet is a great idea health-wise. But there’s one small problem: a great many of us like sugar—a lot. No matter how hard we try, it’s just plain difficult to avoid. Thanks perhaps to our ancient ancestors, we’re hard-wired to crave it.

But necessity is the mother of invention, which is why we’ve seen the development over the past half century of artificial sweeteners, alternatives to sugar that promise to satisfy people’s “sweet tooth” without the harmful health effects. When it comes to dental health, these substitute sweeteners won’t contribute to bacterial growth and thus can lower disease risk.

But are they safe? Yes, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The agency has approved six types of artificial sweeteners for human consumption: acesulfame K, saccharin, aspartame, neotame, sucralose and rebaudioside A. According to the FDA any adverse effects caused by artificial sweeteners are limited to rare conditions like phenylketonuria, which prevents those with the disease from safely digesting aspartame.

So, unless you have such a condition, you can safely substitute whatever artificial sweetener you prefer for sugar. And if dental health is a particular concern, you might consider including xylitol. This alcohol-based sweetener may further deter tooth decay—bacteria can’t digest it, so their population numbers in the mouth may actually decrease. You’ll find xylitol used as a sweetener primarily in gums, candies and mints.

Reducing sugar consumption, couple with daily oral hygiene and regular dental visits, will certainly lower your risk of costly dental problems. Using a substitute sweetener might just help you do that.

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